Dreamstime opens door for un-released editorial imagery
Dreamstime has expanded its policy to accept non-model released and non-property released images that are directly pertinent to current events, news and political stories, and social and cultural scenes. The micro-stock company has created a new license for editorial use and encourages photographers to shoot current news events for submission to their data-base. Traditionally micro-stock companies have carefully managed their contributors submissions and avoided accepting imagery of recognizable people without model releases.
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RightsAgent, a new company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, has launched an online platform to allow users to license and monetize content including text, pictures, and videos. The company´s Internet-based free service allows users to consolidate the work they publish across the web into a unified feed, license their work with both Creative Commons and for-profit options, and build reputation based upon the value of the content they create.
Agence France-Presse (AFP), one of the first news agencies in the world (created in 1835 by Charles-Louis Havas), has teamed up with IAM (a company founded by Xavier Gouyou Beauchamps and Pascal Josèphe), to become a minority shareholder in Scooplive (which has been renamed Citizenside), a pioneer in citizen reporting. The investment follows the 
Getty Images (NYSE: GYI) has announced that it has acquired Scoopt, a pioneer in marketing eyewitness images (citizen photojournalism) to mainstream media outlets. Scoopt was launched in 2005 and has gained recent notoriety when it supplied images to the media of the tragic Manhattan plane crash that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle in October 2006 and coverage of the fierce January 2006 storms in the U.K., which brought devastation and disruption to large parts of the country.
Recently Kyle MacRae the CEO of Scoopt, an agency specializing in marketing the work of amateur/citizen photojournalists, was interviewed on CNN by Jonathan Mann. During the interview MacRae highlights examples of images sold by Scoopt and the potential revenue that may be earned with your cell phone camera. Mann asks the question “Is this going to turn anyone with a cell phone into a member of a lurking hoard of people chasing celebrities on the off-chance they might be able to get a shot just like professional paparazzi?” MacRae’s response “in 18 months of business we simply haven’t seen it.”
In a move that has already set off alarm bells among professional photojournalists, Yahoo and Reuters announced a program called "You Witness" to allow amateur photographers with cell-phone cameras to submit images of newsworthy current events for use in both companies' news outlets. Reuters will also distribute the appropriate images through other news outlets it supplies with current event photographs. Reuters says they will compensate photographers for images used and distributed at the same rate as they compensate their own free-lancers.
